JetBlue Reports March Traffic and Capacity Increase

JetBlue Airways announced operational results for March 2017.

The carrier said that its total traffic and capacity were up for the month.

The New York-based airline’s passenger traffic for the month was 4.079 billion revenue passenger miles, or RPMs, a year-over-year increase of 2.9% from 3.965 billion RPMs in the same period last year.

The carrier’s capacity also increased, up 4.2% to 4.76 billion available seat miles, or ASMs, from 4.567 billion ASMs in March 2016.

JetBlue’s passenger load factor for the month was 82.6%, a 0.5 percentage point decrease from 83.1% last March.

The airline said its preliminary revenue per available seat mile for March was down 6.5% year-over-year, although it would be up 0.5% excluding the impact of the timing of the Passover and Easter holidays this year. As a result, JetBlue expects April RASM to increase somewhat. Starting with the second quarter, it will no longer report monthly RASM figures, however.

The carrier said it expects first quarter RASM to be down 4.8%.

Finally, the airline’s on-time performance was at 70.8% for the month and its preliminary completion factor, which represents the percentage of scheduled flights completed, whether on-time or not, was 96.1%.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)